


passive resisters must understand that they are as important as saboteurs

by youareiron_andyouarestrong



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: (no one is surprised by this right), Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 23:26:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9263510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youareiron_andyouarestrong/pseuds/youareiron_andyouarestrong
Summary: to hesitate is to die.it’s a motto Jyn’s lived her life by, thus far, and it’s landed her in prison, in trouble, and in the Rebel Alliance.Cassian Andor is a man who hesitates.





	

when Jyn is nine years old, only been with Saw’s guerrilla warriors for no more than a month, she hesitates when shooting a stormtrooper about to attack their contact in a dirty trading post off-planet. it was happening so fast and he was just so suddenly _there,_ a giant version of the doll she’d had when she was younger. she’d hesitated and he killed their contact. Saw had been the one to shoot him.

after, when they’d gotten off planet, the rest of the partisans were grimly silent and Saw looked so disappointed Jyn remembered being terrified that they’d leave her stranded at the next trading post. 

they don’t leave her. instead, when they get back to base, Saw puts a target with a stormtrooper helmet in front of her and makes her shoot it through the head, again and again and again. “ _you must not hesitate again,”_ he tells her sternly. “ _to do so is to die. do you understand, Jyn?”_

he had never once called her “Stardust” like her father did and sometimes Jyn was grateful and other times she hated that he didn’t. “ _I understand,”_ she’d said, because she was too young and too scared and too shaky with the blaster recoil ringing through her hands to do anything else. 

now, the lesson has carved it’s way into her heart, her bones, her hands. _to hesitate is to die._ it’s a motto Jyn’s lived her life by, thus far, and it’s landed her in prison, in trouble, and in the Rebel Alliance. 

Cassian Andor is a man who hesitates. 

no, this is not fair or true and Jyn acknowledges it herself grudgingly. Cassian Andor is a man who _thinks,_ who _plans,_ who has about as much liking for going off book as a tauntaun going through anything that looks remotely like _weather_ (which is to say, not at all) _._ every move is thought out, every step considered and weighed and all of it, all of it, is always for the Rebellion. nothing sways him from it. 

(except her eyes in her father’s face.) 

(there is some small, soft part of Jyn, well hidden and kept out of sight, that wonders what it would be like to have such attention and focus utterly centered on her and what he might do with it. that small secret softness wants to know what hands with callouses might feel like on scarred skin, a rough jaw on her neck, and a mutter in her ear, low and warm and impatient, rich and melting.)

(this is the part she pretends does not exist.)

but Scarif happens. Scarif and it’s beaches and water and deadly golden light. Jyn is prepared to die here. she can live with this death.

except, of course, she doesn’t. 

Bodhi gets them out. Chirrut and Baze are still miraculously in one piece. they leap into hyperspace with almost the entirety of the Imperial fleet on their tails and don’t dare go back to Yavin IV, without giving away the Rebel base. they hunker down on godsforsaken _Tattooine_ of all places _,_ and pray no one’s on the lookout for two ex-temple guardians, one defector Imperial pilot and two shell-shocked Rebels.

this is unlikely, but Chirrut serenely reminds them that “all is as the Force wills it.”

“oh,” says Bodhi weakly, still pale and shaky from _kicking_ a damn grenade out of their ship and thereby saving all their skins, “that bad, huh?” 

they settle down for the night. there’s a medkit in the ship that they use to tend to Cassian and Chirrutt. Jyn, dazed and fidgety from the _not dying_ she hadn’t planned on, makes herself comfortable on the floor next to where Cassian is resting on a bench, pale and bloody. Baze had to tend to his left leg and it took her and Bodhi to hold him down to it. his breathing is still ragged from the muffled screaming. she rests her head against the bunk, looking into his face.

it’s still the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen and there is no part of Jyn that knows whatsoever how to deal with him. 

 _I was ready,_ she thinks, _I was ready and you made me afraid to die._ because one embrace in the face of certain death. it’s too big, too much, so fast, like a stormtrooper in front of a nine year old with a blaster. 

Cassian opens his eyes, looks at her and it is like being touched. everything in her both recoils and wants to get closer. 

“when this is over,” he begins to say, and then stops. the only way it might be over is if they’re all dead. “when we get out of here–” he tries again and there’s just _no way_  that’s going to be easy, like everything else they’ve gone through together and he knows it. “I want–” he tries and just _stops_ for the third time, because Cassian Andor is a man who is afraid of admitting he _wants_ anything. 

but Jyn is not.

they’ve already had one desperate embrace on the beaches of a burning world. here, now, in a stolen ship, with their crew, in a world made out of suns and sand, Jyn kisses the very corner of his mouth, the one place where it might not hurt. another larger, darker part of her soul wants it to hurt, to remind him, to remind herself that they are _alive,_ they are here, and that for just once in her life, Jyn is not content to look down. she wants to look up and see clear skies, and stars.

“we can talk about it later,” she tells him very seriously, “ _when_ we get out of here.”

something in his face goes loose, almost relieved; his head comes down to rest on the bunk’s hard surface. “when,” he agrees, a promise between them, “when.”

Jyn shuts her eyes and dreams of stardust and light.    

**Author's Note:**

> behold, I cometh with a new ship, ready and waiting with feels to wreck us all.


End file.
